US government releases UFO sighting reports - 'Orbs swarming in all directions'

The Pentagon released scores of UFO files on Friday with descriptions of reported sightings of orbs, discs and fireballs spanning 80 years.

Witnesses described seeing "green orbs, discs and fireballs" dating as far back as 1948, the files show. More recently, a senior US intelligence officer said he saw "countless orange orbs swarming in all directions" last year rendering him "speechless".

The fresh batch of materials includes a half dozen documents, a handful of audio recordings and 51 videos, including one of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) being shot to bits. The circumstances are unexplained.

The files are the second set released after an order this year from President Donald Trump.

The Pentagon uploaded the first set of 161 files on May 8, promising there would be more to come.

One of the documents released on Friday is a 116-page Armed Forces Special Weapons Program report from 1948-1950 that said witnesses had recounted 209 sightings of unidentified objects - orbs and other objects the US government now calls "unidentified anomalous phenomena" (UAP).

The report includes accounts of a series of sightings and investigations in Sandia, New Mexico, where witnesses described how UFO's manoeuvred, flew away and disappeared but then exploded.

In another document the unnamed "senior U.S intelligence officer" provided his first-hand account of seeing phenomena from a military helicopter in 2025 at a location listed as "western United States".

He described spotting mysterious "orange orbs flaring up and down" when investigating "loud thuds heard in the mountains" on a test range where others had spotted UFOs in preceding days.

The "series of close UAP encounters" lasted for more than an hour, he said. The UAP were "super-hot," low to the ground, and moving at high speed.

"They were oval-shaped, orange with a white or yellow centre, and emitted light in all directions," the officer reported. He said the swarm appeared to coalesce as they flared up and down for several minutes, "forming a distinct triangle before vanishing".

He said he did not take any photos because he was too focused on "assessing what it was and whether it posed a threat."

The files do not draw any definitive conclusions about the existence of extraterrestrial life or provide any evidence of alien technology. US officials have said that people can decide for themselves.

In a statement following the first release of files, President Trump said that "with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" Have Fun and Enjoy!"

Most of the videos disclosed on Friday feature grainy footage captured by US military infrared cameras between 2018 and 2023.

In an accompanying description, the Pentagon explains that members of Congress requested the videos in March but that many lack a "substantiated chain of custody", meaning they could have been tampered with at some point.

One of those videos purportedly shows the shoot-down of a blurry object by a US fighter jet. A description says it happened over Lake Huron in February 2023, around the time that a Chinese surveillance balloon traversed the United States, spurring increased scrutiny of UFOs.

The Biden administration ordered the destruction of several unidentified objects at the time, among them what officials described as an octagonal structure with strings attached, which was shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border.

Video of another orb says it shows a spherical UAP zooming over the Yellow Sea in 2022.

It's unclear if the releases of the UFO files have done much to satiate the curiosity of legions of UFO researchers, official and otherwise.

"Let keep digging!" Congressman Tim Burchett, a Republican from Tennessee, wrote in a post on X thanking President Trump. Burchett has previously advocated for more transparency on UFO sightings.

When the first tranche of files was made public, he said they represented a "drop in the bucket" compared to what was to come. "I would say 'Holy Crap' is coming."

The Pentagon said additional files will be released on "a rolling basis".